


Aluthol of one hundred battles: Marienburg 2446

by Puncherofdragons



Series: Aluthol of one hundred battles [1]
Category: Warhammer Fantasy
Genre: Asur, Dumbasses, Elves, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-30
Updated: 2018-01-30
Packaged: 2019-03-11 11:27:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13523286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Puncherofdragons/pseuds/Puncherofdragons
Summary: Who would have thought a walk through the seediest district of Marienburg, the greatest port of the Old World, would cause so much trouble?...In hindsight he had relished it.





	Aluthol of one hundred battles: Marienburg 2446

**Author's Note:**

> My first text! Wooooooo!
> 
> This is backstory for a character I played in a warhammer fantasy roleplay campaign once, but I am an attention whore so I'm posting it on here too. I intend to write some more bits, describe other important episodes in his life, not necessarily in chronological order, though. For context, he's seventeen in this story.
> 
> He had a good run, Aluthol the Murder Elf.

Aluthol had always enjoyed the night. The sights, the sounds, the smells… It was interesting to see just how much a city’s character could change in just a few, short hours. The true nature of Men only comes out in the dark, he mused on one of his many night-time wanderings. Strange, how gloom laid everything bare. This drive towards experience quite naturally took Aluthol to the squalorous narrows of the Doodkanal. Once, before his family had come to Marienburg, the Doodkanal had been a thriving and bustling Ward, easily the equal of any other in that great city. Time, however, had not been kind to the district. For whatever reason, the currents through the city had changed, and the waters of the canal grew sluggish and heavy with waste. The trade that was the city’s lifeblood stopped flowing, and the Dead Canal began living up to its name. The once proud Ward had turned into a lawless slum, ruled more by street gangs than any municipal authority. The sheer contrast to the Elftown was downright intoxicating. 

This night in particular was proving to be lively. Even along the destitute Doodkanal the streets roiled with revelry, a mass of humanity thronged every winding street, but even lost in celebration of some petty god or holiday as the crowd was, it still parted soundlessly before Aluthol. Even in this outlaw district, where the Blackcaps feared to tread, folk were not so stupid as to try and rob the scion of one of the great elven clans, especially not one who stood seven feet tall.

So Aluthol trod fearlessly down the darkest alley he could find, picking his way around piled refuse and barrels of brackish rainwater, ignoring the two man-sized shadows that tailed him and not stopping until he saw steel glint in moonlight. One of the thugs had drawn a knife. “Don’t move, knife-ear!” He grated, as a third man stepped out in front of Aluthol, “hand your purse over and we’ll have this over with quick-like!” His previous assessment had been wrong, it seemed. These humans really _were _stupid. There was some height to the man in front of him, but to Aluthol’s eyes, his stature was nearly childlike.  
“You deaf!?” Said the apparent leader. “Show us some fuckin’ guilders!” His fellows drew knives of their own. Aluthol realized he likely should be afraid. There were, after all, three desperate-looking men holding knives to him, but these were just humans, with their sluggish movements, sloppy stances and fragile lives.__

__Taking the thug’s weapon proved easy. Aluthol’s hand shot forward and, just as Father had shown him, he twisted the wrist of the man in front of him. He screamed in pain as the knife fell from his grip and into Aluthol’s hand. Time flowed strangely, at once too quick to truly comprehend and slow to the point of painfulness. The knife in Aluthol’s hand slid silk-smooth into his would-be robber’s eye. The moment Rushed past and became the next. He spun around, felt a gash open along his side as he slashed at the throat of the second. Another man fell gurgling to the filthy street. The final robber’s knife tumbled from fear-slick fingers, he tried in vain to run. Time flowed again. Aluthol acted on instinct. Reaching out with long arms, he caught the bandit by the neck of his tunic and pulled him close. He could have ended it then and there, but that wouldn’t be proper. It’d be too quick. Too bloodless. With a fully-grown man squirming helplessly in his grip, Aluthol knelt to the street and found a stone in the muck. Perfect. The man bawled something, a plea for mercy most likely, but it fell on deaf ears._ _

__Aluthol breathed in deeply the air, cloying with death and filth. He’d pushed through forests of beggars’ arms and met the glares of street toughs without flinching. This was Humanity! This was real! Not like his father’s vapid mansion, the endless meetings with other clans and the meaningless pleasantries. The people of Doodkanal were _alive _, truly alive, unlike the drones of etiquette that formed Aluthol’s social circle.___ _

____He didn’t know how long he sat there, pounding skull against stone, but he didn’t notice the man going limp until well after the tenth strike. He turned the pulped head in his hand, breathed heavily from the exertion as he examined the red ruin where once there had been a face. A tooth had ended up near where an eye socket used to be. Interesting. He let the body thud to the ground, just another corpse in the gutter, and rose to look the scene over. There was an odd beauty to the corpse-strewn alley, Aluthol found, a kind of brutal elegance to the limbs lying tangled and inert, to the blood forming tiny rivers in the grimy ruts of the ground. That, and the thrill of victory, triumph and rushing blood through his body, made a smile spread across his face, flush with exhilaration and the delight of strength exercised. He shook his head to sober himself. How would he explain this to Father? Three men lay dead by his hand. Granted, they were only human and few would mourn their passing. These had been low, even by the standards of their mayfly race. No great loss at all. They’d have died in a few decades anyway._ _ _ _

____Father would understand, he’d have to. He’d dealt with humans for decades, since the Great War, he knew what they were like, Aluthol thought as he began to make his was back to Elftown, forcing himself to walk tall despite his injury. Showing weakness would only get him attacked again. Luckily, no-one was bold enough to attempt anything on the way back, and even the ferryman he paid to take him home was too terrified of his towering, blood-spattered passenger to ask any questions. Aluthol saw fear in the eyes of those he passed. He decided he liked it. The canals became wider and cleaner as Doodkanal grew further and further away, as if the ward itself polluted the city’s waterways, until Aluthol’s ferry finally reached the mansions and crystal-clear waters of Elftown, or Sith Rionnasc’namishathir, as the ward was more properly known. On all sides, flat-bottomed barges and larger leisure-boats dwarfed the one-passenger ferry, and elven mansion-complexes, sprawling and labyrinthine, covered the many islands so densely that no ground was visible. The bridges were constructed with such skill that mortar was barely needed to hold them, the stones simply fit together. All was perfection, crafted with the kind of skill that comes with that came with centuries of practice. All was perfection, and oh so boring._ _ _ _

_______A Manniocs-quinsh watchboat soon stopped the small ferry, a sleek vessel with a mailed and helmeted elf standing in the prow, a spear in his hand and a bow on his back. “Halt!” he cried in crisp Eltharin. “Who are you and what is your business in Sith Rionnasc’namishathir?” The canal water turned red about Aluthol’s hands as he dipped them to clean off blood before he rose._  
“Aluthol Waveborn,” he replied. “Son of Amendil Waveborn. I am returning home from a night-time stroll.”  
The guard frowned in that oh-so-familiar elven way. “Been fraternizing with humans, have you?” he said, apparently more concerned with that than the wound on Aluthol’s side and his bloodstained clothing. “What would your mother think, seeing you like this?”  
“What my parents think is none of your concern, clanless,” Aluthol said, sneering. “Now let me pass.” Dismayed, the watchman called to his fellow to let the ferry past and the watchboat sailed away. The Mannioc-quinsh still cast wary looks at Aluthol even as their boat shrank in the distance. 

____Looking eastwards, towards dry land, Aluthol saw the sky begin to redden as he trod along the narrow quays that led from the canal to the Waveborn wing of the Clan Aisellion mansion. Father was likely still in his study; he often worked through the night, being a Wavemaster was time-consuming business, after all. Aluthol walked through winding corridors and up many staircases, all shrouded in pre-dawn gloom. Elves had little need of light and the human servants were just now waking up. He finally came to the door of his father’s office, sequestered away just under the roof so the Wavemaster could take care of matters in peace. Amindel was known to prefer solitude._ _ _ _

_______Aluthol raised his hand to knock, but Father’s voice cut him off. “Come in, son,” he said through the door. “The door’s not locked.” Aluthol leaned his shoulder against the door to push it open and entered the Wavemaster’s office. Aluthol's father sat spear-straight at a desk custom made to accommodate his size, the discipline drilled into him from his time in the militia had never left him, scratching at some document while a merry flame crackled in the small hearth._  
Aluthol remembered coming here when as a child. When ocean storms rattled the Mansion or night terrors stole sleep from him, he would go to Father in his study and sit in his lap, drifting off to the tales of heroes sung in a resonant voice. In this room, Aluthol had always felt safe. Loved. Now, however, he felt empty, hollowed by Father’s worried eyes and his inevitable disappointment. Father rose so quickly the chair fell clattering to the floor behind him. “Alu?” he asked, staring wide-eyed at Aluthol’s red-stained clothes. “What happened?”  
“Some thugs jumped me while I was out walking,” Aluthol said dully as he stepped closer. “I took care of them.”  
“They’re dead, then,” Amendil said, a grim look on his face.  
“Yes,” Alu admitted. “All three. Left no witnesses.”  
“Gods, lad,” Father said, shutting his eyes and rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Where was this?”  
“In the Doodkanal.”  
Father sighed lengthily, as if deflating, and slowly sat down again, staring off into the air. 

____Aluthol took a seat in the chair in front of the desk. Silence hung heavy in the air. Aluthol shifted and squirmed in his seat, stared at his hands, fidgeted with the hem of his shirt, looked anywhere but at Father. He did not know how long it was before Father spoke, and when he finally opened his mouth, Aluthol winced in dread anticipation.  
“Why did you do it?” He said. “You knew something like this would happen, and yet you went out anyway.” Father’s face, so much like Aluthol’s own, twitched with barely contained rage. “We’ve tried for centuries, _centuries _! Ceaselessly, since before the Great War, to make the humans accept us. This little misadventure of yours could set us back decades! What were you thinking, wandering through the Doodkanal dressed like that!?” Father gestured to Aluthol’s ruined finery with furious hand, blazing on unabated. “You wanted this, didn’t you? You pranced on in, practically begging every desperate wretch in the entire Ward to try his luck with you just for a cheap thrill. Gods, lad! We’re Asur. We’ve dignity to keep.” Father gave another exasperated sigh and massaged his temples. “You must think of the family, the clan. Your recklessness endangers us all! What if the humans decide they’ve had enough? Where does that leave us?”___ _ _ _

______Shame heated Aluthol’s cheeks, shame and the cloying knowledge that Father was right. “For now get yourself cleaned and try for some sleep,” Father continued, weariness in his voice now that his anger had burned itself out. “We’ll discuss this with your mother and sister tomorrow and afterwards never speak of this incident again, understood? We cannot let word of this spread to the other clans.” He put his hand on Aluthol’s shoulder and met his eyes, grey against grey. “Don’t worry, son,” he said. “We’ll make it through this.”  
“Yes, Father,” Aluthol responded meekly, hardly able to speak for shame. “Good lad,” Father said, smiling. “Now go get patched up, we’ve a difficult day ahead and dawn’s approaching fast.”_ _ _ _ _ _

______Aluthol left his father’s office tense. Uncle Angran couldn’t come here soon enough, then he’d finally be away from all this. Yes, just a few short years and he’d finally get to join the militia, leave Marienburg and its inanities behind._ _ _ _ _ _


End file.
